Response: Barney and Andrejevic

This week I am responding to Prometheus Wired: The Hope ofr Deomcracy in the Age of Network Technology by David Barney and iSpy: Surveillance and Poer in the Interactive Era by Mark Andrejevic.

This week’s prompt:
[…]But what is the central reason for this disagreement: what, in other words, do the optimists “just not get” about digital media, according to Barney and Andrejevic? Do you think that the latter two writers might consider the work of the optimists to be a twenty-first century version of what the Marxists called “ideology”?

Barney’s disagreement with the digital optimists seems to be similar to my disagreement with Hayek. I was annoyed with Hayek because I felt that in his idealistic exaltation of “maximum freedom of individual choice,” he was completely ignoring the reality of the many powerless people exploited by the choices of those who have the power to exercise their freedom of choice. Barney makes a similar argument. Although it may be true that the implementation of network and computerized technologies in the workforce would result in a net increase of jobs, as the creation of new types of jobs would outbalance the elimination of manufacturing jobs, Barney points out that those who held the eliminated jobs are not necessarily hired immediately into the new jobs (often, he says, they are not). He seems to feel that the digital optimists try to reduce human lives and all the implications therein to numbers: “The point here is that, even if jobs eliminated by network technology are eventualy replaced by jobs ‘elsewhere’ in the economy, the fact of their elimination is more significant in the lives of the people who held them than is their replacement with a job for somebody somewhere else” (135).

I wonder how Norbert Weiner would respond to Barney’s argument. I interpreted Weiner’s argument in The Human Use of Human Beings to be that both machines and humans have their place in production, and that once machines become available to fill certain tasks, they should be implemented, thereby freeing humans up for more appropriate activities. Weiner feels that to place a human in a job that should be given to a machine is to degrade the human. The human mind should be stimulated, not demeaned to menial, mindless tasks. As such, I think he would approve the use of network technologies that eliminate jobs in the manufacturing industry and the creation of more human appropriate jobs, although there are some positions which have been replaced with machines that he would probably not approve. However, it is difficult to make such an idealistic argument in the face of Barney’s numbers and unemployment rates. Would Weiner maintain that machines should still be implemented, and that concurrently targeted efforts should be made to reintegrate those who lost their jobs into the workforce in new positions?

Andrejevic seems to disagree with the idea that the interactive nature of the internet will lead to a more egalitarian society. For him, this same interactivity praised by digital optimists is one of the key elements in the creation of digital enclosure. Despite claims towards egalitarianism, Andrejevic recognizes that someone still controls and has access to all the information that is exchanged through digital interaction. In an information economy, information is a kind of currency, and, according to Andrejevic, we willing turn over large amounts of this currency to the controllers of the information systems, creating an informational hierarchy: “A similar division of groups can be discerned in the emerging digital enclosure between those who control privatized interactive spaces (virtual or otherwise), and those who submit to particular forms of monitoring in order to gain access to goods, services, and conveniences” (3). Andrejevic does not buy Kelly’s idea that “the web runs on love, not greed.” The controllers of “privatized interactive spaces” only want to exploit the information of “those who submit” for profit.

I found reading the opening pages of iSpy and Andrejevic’s description of Google’s plan for contextual advertising. Today, contextual advertising is an everyday occurrence, and while it is sometimes annoying, we don’t generally view it as having the same sinister qualities as does Andrejevic. Is this because it is really not so sinister after all, or are we just desensitized? Are we so used to submitting to the information controllers so we can get the goods and services we want that we cease to resent such advertising as an uninvited invasion of our privacy?

Response: Kelly, Lurie, and Trippi

This week I am responding to “The Web Runs on Love, not Greed,” “Making my own Music,” and “We Are the Web” by Kevin Kelly, “Why the Web Will Win the Culture Wars for the Left” by Peter Lurie, and The Revolution will not be Televised: Democracy, the Internet, and the Overthrow of Everything” by John Trippi.

This week’s prompt:
Like the writers for week twelve, those of week thirteen strike a strongly positive note about the future ... What do you make of their arguments? Are they too optimistic, or do you think that at least some of their predictions are likely to come true, if they haven't already?

While the writers we read this week were rather optimistic, and often had a flair for the dramatic (Kelly’s repeated attribution of the term “miracle” to the internet, Trippi’s title “The Overthrow of Everything”), they did not strike me as naïve as Barlow’s “Declaration …” did. While they have high hopes for the transformative potential of the internet, their expectations seem to be built to a greater extent on facts or history. Trippi’s assessment of the internet’s power to mobilize and connect comes from his experience in the Howard Dean campaign, where it did precisely that. He notes the way the internet empowered members of the campaign, and from that observation he extrapolates that we as consumers will demand this same empowerment from all our usage of the internet. I think this, for one thing, has definitely proved to be true. From personalization of blogs and web pages, to sites selling custom-designed, made-to-order products, to the plethora of iPhone apps available for download, consumers seek convenience, choice, portability, and ease of access.

Kelly’s argument is similar, in that he affirms that internet users will be driven to create content out of passion, not for profit. When internet users are empowered to create (blogs, vlogs, fan art, etc.), they will. Kelly portrays the relationship between the internet and its users as a symbiosis—the one offers a platform that empowers the other to keep the first going.

I had some problems with Lurie’s argument. His argument is fundamentally McLuhanesque, in that the structure and nature of the internet promotes a deconstructionist manner of thinking in its users. I think this is generally a valid point, and I have also observed that people are less willing to trust a single source. However, I think in his assessment of the implications of this trend takes some things for granted which are highly debatable. He conflates religion and politics in his argument, assuming that the “right” is entirely made up of subscribers to centralized, authoritarian religions. While it may be true that more such religious people identify with the political right than with the left, he seems to think (or, at least phrases his argument as such) that this is an absolute categorization. There are, in fact, conservatives who identify as such for economic reasons (they favor the free market) or reasons of governance (they want less governmental interference) than for traditional social values. Lurie’s argument does not address why the deconstructionist nature of the internet would undermine these economically or politically conservative modes of thought. He also makes the converse assumption that all members of the political left are agnostic. This, also, is untrue. There are many religious liberals, and for some of them their belief in the importance of social welfare programs is fueled by a religious (even if unorthodox) faith. Would a deconstructionist system that will destroy religious belief challenge the reasons why such people identify as liberal, causing them, perhaps, to opt instead for a free market where they can pursue their own ends? Lurie does not address this possibility in his article, and I feel like it weakens his argument.

Response: Negroponte, Barlow, and Gilder

This week I am responding to Being Digital by Nicholas Negroponte, “A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace” and “Selling Wine Without Bottles: The Economy of Mind on the Global Net” by John Perry Barlow, and Life After Television by George Gilder

While reading the Barlow essay “Selling Wine Without Bottles” and Barlow’s discussion of how our information-age, material-based mindset concerning intellectual property cannot be applied to the digital age, I was reminded of Melissa Anelli’s discussion of how copyright infringement and intellectual property was negotiated in the early days of the Harry Potter fandom and its presence on the internet. Anelli is the webmistress of the Leaky Cauldron, a popular Harry Potter fansite. Her book, Harry, A History, details the growth and development of the Harry Potter fandom. I unfortunately did not bring my copy of the book to school with me, so I can’t quote the direct passage. However, points out that the beginnings of the Harry Potter fandom were concurrent with the internet’s rapid development as a community forum (the Y2K era). In this time, fans began making fan websites, fan art, fan fiction, etc., using names and terms from the Harry Potter books. When Warner Brothers bought the rights for the Potter films, they began cracking down on what they felt to be copyright infringement, targeting these fansites. There was a highly publicized of a twelve-year-old girl, who had started a Harry Potter fansite, receiving a “cease-and-desist” letter from Warner Brothers. Being twelve, she, quite understandably, freaked out, thinking she was about to be sued or arrested or something. There was a great deal of backlash against Warner Brothers after this, and in the ensuing months they worked out exactly how to respond to these unauthorized usages of Harry Potter names and terms.

Again, I regret that I don’t have the book with me, so I can’t precisely say what the result was; I think it has something to do with making profit, but then again I know that wizard rock bands write music about Harry Potter and sell their music for profit. In any case, I think it’s an example of companies attempting to apply the industrial-age mindset described by Barlow to digital goods in the post-information age. While the use of the name “Harry Potter,” the term “Expelliarmus,” or the image of the Hogwarts crest in fan art may technically violate the sorts of copyrights we are accustomed to using, there just seems something wrong with penalizing a pre-teen for drawing a picture of Harry Potter and posting it online. J.K. Rowling herself, I think, has spoken a bit on the topic, and said that she is glad that people find her work and her world to be a source of creative inspiration, and she does not want to stifle that or to shut down conversations. I think this sort of negotiation that has occurred within the Harry Potter fandom is indicative of the negotiations that will need to happen in all sectors of “the economy of the mind” to achieve a system that allows free exchange of ideas but also does not violate a creator’s right to their creation.

I mentioned wizard rock above, and I think that’s an example of Negroponte’s new Sunday painter. In chapter 18 of Being Digital, he says, “The middle ground between work and play will be enlarged dramatically. The crisp line between love and duty will blur by virtue of a common denominator—being digital. The Sunday painter is a symbol of a new era of opportunity and respect for creative avocations—lifelong making, doing, and expressing” (Ch. 18). Internet forums like YouTube, DeviantArt, and Etsy allow people the opportunity to, perhaps, turn their recreational arts-and-crafting into a source of profit. The internet allows them to find and appeal to niche markets—like “wrock” (wizard rock) for Harry Potter fans or “trock” (timelord rock) for Dr. Who fans. These internet platforms allow amateur artists a low-cost way of distributing their art to a wide audience, until they gain enough attention or fans to profit. This is one example of digital media’s empancipatory power, in that it creates greater freedom of expression.

I think it’s interesting how both Negroponte and Gilder note an increasing emphasis on personalization and interactivity in our new technologies. In chapter 13, Negroponte describes the way new technologies can gather very specific demographic information about an individual, such that that individual’s devices may offer him or her extremely personalized information, recommendations, and advertisements. Similarly, Gilder discusses how the television, a one-way broadcast device, is giving way to the more interactive telecomputer: “Instead of a master-slave architecture in which every receiver can function as a processor and transmitter of video images and other information” (18). This capacity for user to interact with machine, and for user to interact with user via machine is what many of the Marxist writers (Ensenzberger, Baudrillard, etc.) we read earlier wanted in order to make new media truly democratic. The fact that more contemporary writers are noticing the existence of these trends is probably a source of their optimism. If the earlier, Marxist writers prescribed interactivity as the necessary change in media, and if interactivity is in fact encouraging, contemporary writers may feel that the democratization of the media is actually in their power.

And now, for your listening pleasure, "The Bravest Man I Ever Knew" by The Ministry of Magic.